WWDC Smackdown: Which Companies Apple Hit Hardest

Apple announced many great products and services yesterday, and Tim Cook walked away looking fine and fancy. But not everyone else left in such good shape. Apple threw plenty of nails into its biggest competitors' coffins; here are the companies hit the hardest this WWDC 2012.

Google Maps

Not content to start today's keynote by having Siri tell jokes at Android's expense, Apple went on to unveil new in-house maps that really put the screws to Google. Features like local search (which lets you find local businesses and see Yelp ratings among other things); 3D city views, and flyovers are all longstanding features of Google Maps. Everyone knew this was coming, to the point that Google tried to get out in front of it with its own hastily thrown press conference last week, to announce its 3D initiatives and a man-mounted StreetView camera.

The one thing Apple didn't mention was anything resembling StreetView, which remains a killer feature and one Google has put a tonne of investment into. But still. This is a tough loss for the big G. And that's before we even mention the turn-by turn directions read to you by Siri. Speaking of which....

Which is great for you, but really sucks for apps from Motion X GPS Drive; Garmin, and the entire cottage industry of navigation apps. The biggest kick in the teeth probably went to Waze. Waze is a fantastic little app that uses crowdsourced traffic data with specific road hazard information to get you from point A to point Z as fast as possible. And it was just Sherlocked to shit by Apple's own crowdsourced traffic data-driven app.

Read-Later Apps

This one, you could see coming. Or at least, you should have been able to. Apps like Instapaper; Pocket and Readability are super-popular because they let you bookmark a story in one place in time (like, on your web browser while you are at work) and read it later on another (say, an iPad at night in bed). Even better, they strip out all the extraneous distracting visuals so you can focus on the text and in some cases images of a story.

And now Safari does all that too. The new Reading List function saves web pages wholesale for reading later, and syncs them across all of your devices. When you're ready to read, you can use Safari's Reader function to strip away all those extraneous elements, too. Instapaper and Pocket have been increasingly focused on discovery recently, helping you find new material to read, which now seems really smart. Because when it comes to purely reading it later—and read it prettier—there's probably no use in fighting Apple.

Ultrabooks

You know how ultrabooks were finally starting to catch up to MacBooks? Yeah. So. Here's the new MacBook Pro with Retina display. Unless this thing turns out to have some major problem that isn't immediately apparent, like sending electric shocks to your genitals, it's pretty much the nicest portable machine anyone has ever built. It's way more expensive than your average ultrabook, but it's got way more horsepower, too. Oh, and don't forget those £849 MacBook Airs that can go spec-to-spec with the best of the featherweights.

Your Existing Supply of MagSafe Power Cables

What? MagSafe2 electric boogaloo? Nooooooooo! I've been collecting these dudes for always! What will I do with all the other MagSafe power cables I've been stealing from journalists at every press conference I've gone to for the past six years? Now I guess I'm going to have to buy a bunch of tiny £9 magnets. I say "a bunch" because I'm going to lose approximately all of them, too. Oh well, at least you can be sure that this adapter is future proof and Apple won't roll out a new one in the next five years, right?